If you are wanting to place articles for your own business, or for clients, how about finding journalists and bloggers who are actually LOOKING for input RIGHT NOW? There’s a site called ‘Help A Reporter Out’ – or HARO.

Remember, this is not intended for those of you wanting to place paid articles (I have other blogs on that). This is all about PR - for your client or your own business. It is also a way of getting yourself known and respected by bloggers and journalists.HARO has got nearly 30,000 members-of-the-media, from the New York Times, to Huffington Post and in-between. It is a fee-paying service, but there’s a limited FREE offering, which is GOOD THIS is how it works… Go to www.helpareporter.com/sources That will take you to their subscription page…

Bottom right, you’ll find the FREE offering… Sign-up, and you’ll receive three email alerts every day, covering a whole range of requests for information from journalists. Be PATIENT, though. After a couple of months, you then become eligible for Alerts by SPECIFIC area-of-interest and expertise- with easy-to-follow instructions to help you respond to queries in the industry-categories where YOUR expertise is put to best use, and ONLY the categories that are relevant to you. Oh, and even better? They're creating an area where reporters will be able to post their finished stories, so you can see whether or not you've been ‘quoted’! But right now, you’re just a fledgling operation – will anyone be interested in you? SURE – if your INPUT is valuable. Well, THIS company DOUBLED sales after a HARO item was published

How cool is that?

Of course, you may already have your OWN useful-ways of finding bloggers, journalists and publications. If so, and you think others would benefit, let us know. That way, everybody wins.